Friday, September 30, 2011

Teaching was awesome today.

Binny is one of my 6-year-old preschoolers who's learning English for the first time in my class. This morning, we went over "J" words, and we learned the word "jet." During one of our get-up-and-move games, Binny grabbed my attention, smiled so big, and said, "Tomorrow, tomorrow... Jet!" She spread her arms out and leapt as if taking off in flight. "Jet! ...Hong Kong!" I remembered Ginny Teacher telling me that Binny wouldn't be in class Thursday and Friday, and I quickly made the connections.

"You're going to Hong Kong tomorrow and Friday? That's awesome!"

As if hearing Binny's first one-on-one conversational English sentence EVER wasn't cool enough...

I sat beside her at lunch today. She turned to me as she often does, and she held my hand as she often does. She pulled my hand toward her again and again repeating "Hong Kong" and looking at me very sweetly. "You want me to go to Hong Kong with you?" I made simple hand gestures, and she nodded with her deep black eyes smiling.

I melted.

The second awesome thing was getting my first original picture from a student today. Elizabeth (8) did an excellent job recreating my outfit with crayons and paper. It's taped to the inside of my cabinet now.

Also, I've totally got the hang of all of my classes now, and I can keep 5 out of 7 of them on track really well. There are a couple classes I'm extremely proud of. Binny's preschool class are my babies. Ginny and I share them. We're their first English teachers, they're adorable little young'ins, and the adore us. (Well, I think they do.) Bryan and Alex, the only boys among 5 girls, try to outdo each other with "Lindsay Teacher! I love you one hundred three, three, three, three, three!" and "Lindsay Teacher! I love you 92 plus, plus, plus, plus 3!" I would do anything for these kids.

Back to Elizabeth's class: They are on the Treasures curriculum, and they are in the Martin Luther King room, so I call them my MLK Treasures class. These kids are brilliant. They are bright, inquisitive, receptive, and so cute (as most Korean kids are, I've found). Their curiosity is what endears them to me the most. One day, Thomas walked in and asked, "Teacher, who is Martin Luther King? He is king in America?" So began an intriguing 10 minute lesson in Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights, racism, and MLKJ's assassination. They kept asking questions, and I'm pretty sure we could have kept researching for an hour. One of them even thought to ask where MLKJ is buried.

Sadly, this was my last day with my Step High class. I has just totally owned the syllabus creating, and I was just totally owning the classroom presence teachers need to really keep things going in class, but their class time is getting moved, and I can't follow them. I feel this need to make sure their next teacher knows everything about how to teach this class. I've had to restrain myself from writing detailed notes about all the students. Is this anything close to what it's like being a mother?

My last story is about the handsome new boy in my New High Kids class. He is easily the best English speaker in the class, and I was surprised when he was placed with my students, but I fell in love with him the first day, so I don't want him to leave (even if he were to excel elsewhere. Ha!). This kid is calm, cool, and collected, with a nice spice of edge and just a pinch of I-don't-care. In the most relaxed voice, he asked me on Monday, "Teacher. What means 'son of a bitch?'"
"Hm. Well, Donghyun, 'son of a bitch' is a bad word. You should not say it. It means..." and then we had a little conversation about definitions, where he'd heard the phrase (his friends), and "don't worry, Teacher. My friends don't call me that."

Today, we had a speaking test, we went over a long story that they need to memorize, and we had an additional writing test to start. Donghyun asked me, "Teacher. We have to write this, too?"
"Yes, Donghyun, you have to write this, too."

Binny had a lovely time in Hong Kong, from what I gather. She happily presented me with a small gift of a Mickey Mouse pen from Hong Kong Disney World and a little bottle of orange, sparlkly lip gloss. She's also been even more chipper than usual in class since returning from her vacation. :)